


Other Arrangements

by chelseagirl



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: Peggy Carter is pregnant with her second child, and thinking about what that means for her career.  Daniel has some ideas of his own.





	Other Arrangements

“Peggy?”

He hadn’t really expected that she’d be home, but . . . 

He walked to the bedroom, just to check, and down the hall to Michael’s room, but neither his wife nor his child were there.

They’d last spoken two nights earlier; he was on the verge of an all-nighter that had turned into a two-nighter. She’d been away for three, meeting with Stark and some others someplace in upstate New York; it had to do with the new operation that was intended to supplant the SSR. While it was a principle they both held that they should speak every night they were apart, no matter what, more often than not it wasn’t happening. 

Since he was home all alone, he ran the tub. He stripped his clothes off, carefully removed his prosthetic leg, and lowered himself gratefully into the warm water. 

Just as he was ducking his head underwater to rinse his hair, he heard her voice. 

“Daniel? Sweetheart, are you home?”

“In here,” he called. 

In a moment, Peggy popped her head in the bathroom door. “I picked Michael up from the Jarvises. I wish they’d let us pay them, or . . . something.”

“They’re spending more time with our son than we are,” Daniel agreed. “And with the next on the way . . . “

Peggy was well into her second pregnancy, and to her husband’s eyes, she was more beautiful than ever. Thanks to the magic of Ana Jarvis, she had a small but appropriate maternity wardrobe that made her look, as she put it, “neither like an infant nor a whale,” but she was swimming against the tide in a post-war culture where women quit work when they got married, or certainly at least when they learned they were expecting. 

“We need to talk,” she agreed. “I put Michael down, but let me just check on him.”

A moment later, she returned. She sat down heavily on the closed toilet seat. “I’m not going to be able to keep this up much longer. I’m going to have to tell Howard that I’m out.”

“For a few months, like last time.”

“No, Daniel, this time for good. I’ve had a good run, but I’m a mother now, about to be a mother of two, and I have to face up to that.”

“About that.”

“SHIELD will give you the same title, same responsibilities as you’ve had at the SSR,” Peggy continued, ignoring the interruption, “and that will be more than enough. Our wants are modest and the salary will be more than adequate.”

“Except that I’ve handed in my resignation.”

“From the SSR. But SHIELD . . . “

“No, Peggy. I’m done.”

She looked at him in surprise. “But Daniel, are you sure this is what you want? With me leaving, too . . . “

“Except you won’t be leaving. Peg, this is who you are. I’m good at my job, but you . . . you and Stark _are_ SHIELD. I’m not saying you’re not a great mother, a wonderful wife, but the Peggy I love has this work in her bones.”

“And you . . . ?”

“I’ve been looking into the GI Bill, going back to college. I wasn’t much of a student in high school -- I was too busy with football and baseball. I made it through my freshman year, but then the war came. But everything I’ve seen, in the war and after . . . I thought I might like to be a history teacher.”

“Professor Sousa?” She smiled fondly at him.

He considered for a minute. “Nah, that’s a little too much. High school, I thought. Three more years of college, and I could be starting to teach when Mikey’s ready for kindergarten.”

“But . . . “

“Peggy, you’re doing great things. I’m doing good work, too, I know, but you’re a star. There’s a reason Stark chose you. But for me, I’m beginning to think I’d like a quieter life. And our children deserve to have one parent who’s going to be home every night.”

Peggy took a deep breath. “Their father, instead of their mother, then? Make sure you’ve thought this through.”

”Pretty much since we found out you’re expecting, again, I’ve been thinking of nothing else. I just needed to be sure, before I said anything. And we needed to be home on the same evening, which hasn't been happening too much.” He smiled at her. “Who cares if the neighbors might think it’s a little strange? Anyway, I’m a much better cook.”

For that, his beloved reached over the edge of the tub and splashed him. 

“We won’t rush into this,” she said, not quite believing her good fortune in loving this man who understood her so well. 

“Too late. My mind is made up. The only question is . . . what colleges am I applying to? Have you and Stark decided where SHIELD’s headquarters are going to be, yet?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very interested in the years in which Peggy Carter and Howard Stark found SHIELD, and I'm romantic enough to assume that Daniel Sousa is the husband and father of the two children we learn about in _Captain America: The Winter Soldier._ Expectations at that time would have been that Peggy would have given up work to stay home with her children, but Daniel knows exactly who the woman he loves is.


End file.
